


The Tide

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21529072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Fear and respect can be a fine line, and before you know it, respect can turn into obsession.Pitch gets a hold of Jack a few hundred years sooner, twisting and manipulating him him until Jack develops a severe a case of Stockholm Syndrome.Problem is MiM still picks Jack to be the next Guardian."This turned out to be a) rather introspective, b) from Tooth’s perspective (seriously I needed more Tooth in these prompts) c) and something that includes MiM as a sort of disturbing figure. I think it still fits the prompt, just…less directly.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46
Collections: Blackice Short Fics





	The Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/3/2013.

Sometimes, she thinks the tide seems free compared to them. She’s tried, they’ve all tried to do what they were chosen to do as best they can, as best they could figure out with the meager gleams of knowledge the Moon gave them when they were called or created. But it always turns out tipped or slanted. She could only imagine doing her duty if she could fly, all those centuries ago. And so she had grown wings, and feathers, and where would it stop? It’s the Moon’s magic that allowed it to happen, and it will be the Moon’s magic that stops it—but the Moon won’t send that magic. She can’t summon up the same need to stop her transformation as she could to start it. The Moon can only see the Tooth Fairy. He can’t see the human woman that still lives behind the eyes of the bird-insect creature she’d asked to become in desperation. 

Desperation. Because the Moon didn’t care that he used humans for his purposes. Humans that didn’t know what he knew when he pulled at them even stronger than he pulled at the oceans. But just as in the ocean, there could be storms in the human heart that could trouble even the cycle of the tides.

This is what she saw in Jack Frost.

When the Moon said _find him_ , they found him. There was no way they couldn’t. His power had skittered through their veins like liquor and Jack had been like a beacon in all their minds. (And could she use just a little of this power to push the feathers down her neck? No, because the Moon would know, but would not understand. He would think she was trying to shirk her duties and it would not work.) 

But when they found him and made him a Guardian like the Moon told them to, they all looked at each other with apprehension. She tried to be positive, because surely it would work out—Jack would do his duty—the Moon would make it impossible for it to be otherwise.

Among the Guardians he moves like a marionette and she knows there is something deeply wrong. He should be as graceful as the wind that carries him.

It is when Pitch Black appears before them that she recognizes the kind of man who will fight against the tide, who will swim or drown, but never float. She sees Jack watch his every movement, and in his eyes there is a terrible fascination and an even more terrible familiarity and here is something the Moon never counted on: a nearer satellite has claimed the tide that is Jack, and Jack has learned to watch for a steady absence in the sky rather than a shifting presence. And he has learned this oh so well. 

She knows how ready her mind was to obey when she was first called. Alone, she listened for any instruction, and Moon’s hints grew easily in her mind. But if an audible voice had spoken, she thinks she would have followed that voice.

Pitch Black wanted to be real, and he would have been far more real to Jack Frost than the distant and incomprehensible Moon in those moments after his awakening.

And so Pitch Black pulled and pulls Jack like the Moon pulls the tide, and the Moon pulls too, with longer practice, and Jack cannot fight. He flies with enough beauty to make Tooth’s heart ache, and he falls. He balances on a spire of her palace with one finger, and he grabs a wide beam with both arms, hanging on for dear life. 

And though in the battle they act like they are fighting for the little fairies and the teeth and the memories, Tooth can feel a prickle in her skin and a weight behind her eyes that tells her that to the Moon the only thing that matters in this battle is Jack. 

She pities him. Three hundred years between the Moon and Pitch have given him no recourse to oppose either. She fears he will be literally ripped in two. And that she and the other Guardians will have to pretend they don’t know why it happened.

As the fight goes on she finds herself watching Jack watching Pitch. They begin to move perfectly in sync with each other, even though Jack is fighting him, and when Pitch smiles at Tooth she understands.

Pitch will not relinquish Jack. Will not allow him to be destroyed. And so he lets Jack fight him as the Moon wants him to. For Jack is his now, after the centuries of the Moon’s neglect. He has hooks in him deeper than any brute magic from the Moon can reach.

They cannot win Jack. Jack will go with them as Pitch allows when the Moon demands, because he would otherwise be destroyed, but Jack will always belong to Pitch.

And she despairs because she is a creature of the Moon and the Moon opposes Pitch. And she is bitter because she is still human at her core: she is not the tide and she remembers that fear is necessary, as she remembers all things, and as her heart beats freely, she wishes she had been the one to hear Pitch’s voice and so stand a chance against the waves.

She wishes this, even though she knows the choice Pitch gave Jack is no choice at all.

But it did not require feathers.


End file.
